is own side would have
strengthened the presentation of his case. One of the most interesting
chapters of a quite short volume is that in which the author explains
his belief, at first rather startling, that the eventual solution of
the vexed question may be provided through the Sinn Fein movement.
That hope, and the reasons for it, are certainly alone worth the
half-crown for which you can examine them.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "SEE THAT, SIR? 'FARM LABOURERS, MINIMUM TWENTY-FIVE
SHILLINGS A WEEK.' NOW, SIR, WOULD YOU ADVISE ME TO LEAVE MY PRESENT
OCCUPATION AND TAKE UP FARM-WORK?"]

* * * * *

SERGE AKSAKOFF, a distinguished Russian writer of the first half of
the nineteenth century, gave the world a portrait of his grandfather.
It is now translated with a singular felicity by Mr. J.D. DUFF, under
the title, _A Russian Gentleman_ (ARNOLD), and I should like to say
that I, who have suffered something from translations out of the
Russian, have very rarely read one which ran with such plausible
smoothness and gave so clear an impression of a charming original.
STEFAN MIHAILOVITCH BAGROFF was reckoned a good sort and a just
if rather uncompromising man. His character is drawn with faithful
exactness and praised with simple filial appreciation. The foibles
of this worthy patriarch, such as the dragging of his wife along the
floor when he was excessively annoyed, so that she went with her head
bound for a year thereafter, are excused on the ground of his general
decency. And indeed he was a lovable old boy, and the simple and
unselfconscious artistry with which the author develops his character,
and that of his daughter-in-law, SOFYA NIKOLAYEVNA, delights the jaded
literary palate. AKSAKOFF has a quite singular power of selecting just
the incident, the phrase, the gesture, the feature of the landscape
which make you exclaim with a start, "Why, I'm seeing and hearing all
this!" It is such a book as an historian of the modern school would
delight in, more engrossing than fiction of the most realistic type.
There is incident in it too--as of the degenerate KUROLYESSOFF, a
cousin-in-law of MIHAILOVITCH, who used to flog his serfs, sometimes
to death, for the pleasure of seeing them suffer; while the opening
pages, describing the trekking of the family out of far-eastern
Orenburg into the adjoining province of Ufa, and the building of the
mill and the dam, are